Toll in Caribbean Storms Nears 1,000

Relentless rain triggered mudslides Thursday across a 150-mile swath of southern Haiti as U.S. and Canadian troops struggled to help more than 40,000 people made homeless by this week’s deadly storms.

Meanwhile, relief workers said they could not reach much of the area hit by the flooding. Nearly 1,000 people had been confirmed dead and as many were missing in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

The natural disaster has been a crushing blow to a nation already ravaged by political rebellion, poverty and illness. It has also laid bare the powerlessness of an impoverished interim government that has neither an army nor a functioning police force to come to the rescue.

The confirmed death toll rose to 996 after about 300 bodies were recovered in the inundated southeastern Haitian town of Mapou, the Interior Ministry’s Office of Civil Protection reported.

With no signs of the missing, relief workers expressed fears that the toll could climb much higher.

Michel Matera, a disaster assessment expert with the U.N. Development Program, flew by helicopter into Mapou before rains curtailed relief efforts. He described the town as a vision of horror.

“It’s even worse than Fonds-Verrettes,” he said, referring to a Haitian town of 45,000 where at least 165 people died Monday when it was buried by muddy water and debris.

The relief officials could not reliably estimate the amount of aid needed because of the rain, wind and lack of small boats to search outlying areas for survivors.

“We’ve asked for some Zodiacs [boats] to be sent from Port-au-Prince, but we’re told there are none,” Matera said.

Standing on a patch of high ground where the helicopter had landed, Matera said there were no signs of life. Asked whether relief workers had hopes of finding the missing alive, he replied, “None.”

Mudslides caused by tree harvesting throughout southern Haiti struck villages in Port-a- Piment in the far southwest and in an arc of settlements along the border with the Dominican Republic in the east. Impoverished Haitians scavenging wood to use as cooking fuel and to make charcoal have denuded coastal ranges.

Rain knocked out already spotty electricity throughout the country and flooded ravines in Port-au-Prince, a wretchedly poor and overcrowded capital of 2.5 million people. Shantytowns housing hundreds of thousands of people cling to bare hillsides, which environmentalists have warned for years are at risk of sliding into the squalid seafront slums.

No deaths have been reported in Port-au-Prince, but several dozen squatters were believed to be homeless after their crude lean-tos were seen crumbling into the muddy torrents.

Jean-Paul Toussaint, interim minister for public works and communications, said in an interview that numerous irrigation and drainage projects had been identified as urgent measures to prevent hillside settlements from collapsing. But Haiti does not have the resources to undertake them, he said.

“We don’t have the means, and most of those with technical abilities have left the country,” he said, raising his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

Interim President Boniface Alexandre proclaimed today a day of national mourning and appealed for “solidarity among all Haitians” in asking for donations of money, food and clothing. The U.N. World Food Program called for emergency relief funds to be pledged via its website, www.wfp.org.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva said it was sending two teams of disaster experts to Haiti.

More rain was expected today. “It could continue raining for a long time, and the ground is so saturated that even mild storms could set off new slides,” said Ronald Semelfort, a meteorologist at the capital’s disaster relief office. He noted that the six-month rainy season began only a few weeks ago.

U.S. Marines and Canadian troops in the multinational force deployed in Haiti ferried water, food and plastic sheeting for temporary shelters to Mapou and Fonds-Verrettes, said Lt. Col. Dave Lapan, a Marine spokesman. The troops of the U.S.-led multinational force also flew an emergency team to Grand Gosier, where 100 bodies were retrieved Wednesday. Rescuers believe bodies are trapped in submerged houses and fear an outbreak of disease.

“Most of our work is focused on getting through the immediate crisis,” Lapan said, noting that the U.S. and Canadian helicopter sorties were the only aid reaching the flooded areas in the southeast because the only road serving the area had been washed out.

“We’re talking about a number of months before it can be repaired,” he said. “Portions of the road ran along the mountainsides, and water and debris just took away whole chunks of it.”

From Jacmel, capital of the devastated southeastern province, the regional emergency relief director, Margareth Martin, said the local government could not reach Mapou and other isolated coastal areas because the few crude ferries in the province sank during the storms Monday.

In the Dominican Republic, officials put the death toll at 417, with at least 400 missing.

Haitian officials have said hundreds, if not thousands, living on high ground around Fonds-Verrettes and Mapou will have to be relocated to safer territory because of the danger of more mudslides. Alexandre said during a radio address that homes lost to the slides would have to be built elsewhere because the two towns sit beneath unstable slopes.

Haitians have had to depend on poorly funded radio stations for news because the interim government has yet to revive Haitian National Television, which served as a propaganda vehicle for former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide until his resignation Feb. 29 amid an armed rebellion.